


The way the sun rises

by Hecate



Category: Nochnoy Dozor | Night Watch (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-15
Updated: 2006-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nights before the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The way the sun rises

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the beta goes to Sandrine.
> 
> Written for Fuzzycactus

 

 

It was Semyon who finally got Anton from the roof, half dragging, half falling, and Anton let it happen, closing his eyes against it all. The world was still dark, the night not over yet, but behind closed eyes it was darker. It was black and deep and almost enough to stay lost inside himself. Almost. But dawn was coming, and when Semyon drove Anton home in their sun-coloured bus, even his closed eyes couldn't stop the light from spreading. Red lines against his eyelids and warmth on his skin, and Anton couldn't understand how the world could keep on spinning when it was spinning towards its end.

The drive home was too short to lull him to sleep or calm him down, exhaustion still bone deep when Semyon stopped in front of Anton's apartment building. Again, Semyon dragged him over stairs, up this time, but that didn't really mean anything, because Anton was falling, heavy and cold as a stone.

Suddenly, there was another voice beside him, breaking through Semyon's litany of "Come on"s and "You can do it"s; another body breathing against him, strong arms holding him on his left. Kostya, he realized, and for a moment he wanted to push the vampire away. Because he belonged to the darkness, belonged to the people who took Anton's son away. But he was too tired to do anything: too tired to hate Kostya, too tired to hate Zavulon at least - and that simply wasn't right.

They moved faster now, easier, and then he was on his bed, and Kostya and Semyon were talking in the hallway, quiet and calm voices, and for a moment Anton wondered how Semyon could do it. Talk to a vampire so shortly after the battle on the roof, talk to him and not kill him. If Anton could, if he would still feel anything, he would kill every vampire, every member of the Day Watch he would come across. Even Kostya. Especially Kostya, because Kostya had been his friend, had made him believe that the dark was something different than just the absence of light and good.

Kostya left, and Anton could feel it, tension leaving his flat like it had kept its breath. And then there was only him and Semyon and the sound of the morning coming through the windows.

The bed moved under Anton when Semyon sat down, like a ship sinking, and it took Anton a moment to even see the vodka Semyon offered him. But then he was drinking, big gulps that burnt his throat and stomach. Semyon sat beside him, silent and waiting.

"They took Yegor."

His voice was a chain of sounds between gulps that didn't sound like it used to, like it did before. It sounded like failure and loss and grief, and Semyon nodded, still silent.

"That means...that means it's over. They'll win, we lose."

A shrug and more silence, and Anton wanted more than that. He wanted rage and despair, something mean and hot so he could get warm again. But Semyon had never offered heat before, or change. He had always been the eye of the storm, the time of waiting, and Anton knew that this wouldn't change now.

"So, they might win. We'll still fight them. That's what we do."

 _That's what we do_ , and Anton wanted to punch Semyon then, wanted to kick and scream but nothing came and it was easier to keep on drinking.

"Zavulon had been with Geser before I left..." Anton began. A nod and more silence, and the alcohol had stopped to burn by now.

"Why? Why does Geser let Zavulon near him?"

Semyon stared at him then with eyes too old for his years, decades reflecting in them. There was a smile somewhere in those eyes, a warning, too; and Anton knew that he shouldn't have asked. He wouldn't have asked if Yegor hadn't been gone, if the dice hadn't been thrown, cards laid down, and his side had ended up losing.

"They used to be friends."

Friends. Dark and light, and Anton thought of Kostya living across the hallway, and he thought of Zavulon and Geser, and things made more sense now. A sick kind of sense. And when Anton looked at Semyon, he knew there was more to come.

He didn't want to hear it.

"Some say Zavulon loved him. For a while, at least. Then, he didn't, or maybe he did but left because...because Geser was who he is, and Zavulon didn't want to be what Geser wanted him to be. There are some who blame Geser for Zavulon."

A shrug, a pause, and Anton asked himself if maybe it was the light that had turned the darkness into what it was.

"Do you believe that?"

"Everyone who knows Geser loves him at some point. The rest, I don't care about." Semyon took the bottle away from Anton then, taking a gulp before he passed it back. "It doesn't matter. The war matters."

"But the prophecy says that Yegor's side will win."

"I don't care about prophecies. Never did. And this isn't the first war we were expected to lose. It won't be the last one."

Anton could only shrug at so much faith, a movement that felt so much more bitter than it should, and he looked anywhere but at Semyon when he spoke again.

"I think we're going to die."

"Well, we're alive now, aren't we?"

"It doesn't feel as if it matters."

Semyon reached out for him then, a warm hand covering Anton's while the other stroked over his face. "Then we make it matter."

The kiss didn't surprise Anton when it came, he didn't have enough strength and feelings left to manage even such a simple emotion, but he let it happen anyway. Life and kisses and sex didn't matter because Yegor was gone, and he had failed his mission, and the end might as well come while he was on his back, arching against a warm body.

Anton undressed as if Semyon wasn't there. When Semyon pulled him close and kissed him again, he could barely feel it until his body woke up under Semyon's hands and mouth. Then, it was a dull heat and the thud of his bed against the wall, and Anton drifted away with every push.

Anton came - of course he did, because nerve endings didn't care about sons and sides and wars being lost - and he held on to Semyon because there was nothing else left.

Later, they drank cheap beer because they finished the vodka long ago. It tasted stale and bitter. They drank it anyway, the rest of the new day passing into the night, and Anton asked himself if Zavulon and Geser had ever spent a day and a night like this before they couldn't drown their differences in sex and alcohol anymore. He wondered if they still did it sometimes, if Geser ever reached out to the man who could bring them all down. He doubted it, because Geser seemed to prefer absolutes and Zavulon had carried his bitterness like his coat when Anton had seen the two men together.

Maybe that was what would kill them: Geser and his light. Maybe it wasn't. Anton felt like asking Semyon what he thought about it but then he didn't. Semyon wouldn't understand.

_Everyone who knows Geser loves him at some point._

But Anton never knew Geser, never knew him like he knew Kostya or the feeling of the night around him when he was out there, hunting, a stranger's blood running through his veins. Never cared to know him either, because Geser only saw the light and he made Anton feel darker every time he spoke to him.

The night passed between drinking, fucking and silence, and Anton wondered when the war would begin, how much time would pass before he would see Yegor again. Before his friends and his leader would try to kill his son, because that was what they would do.

Another dawn came, and they watched it together, Semyon pressed against his side and Anton high on alcohol, sex and grief. The end of the world had started yesterday, but they still had today and maybe tomorrow, and Anton couldn't bring himself to care about what would come after.

The sun kept on rising no matter what he felt or if he felt anything at all, and it was the light that burnt his eyes, not the darkness.

 


End file.
